For all of you out there who have had me try to explain what this whole GPS adventure thing was about, here it is in more detail and with video.

A group of friends and myself had the privilege of meeting Brian, the creator of all the GPS Competitions I have participated in. Brian had this hobby of traveling around on his spare time, which he had a lot of, and experimenting with the latest GPS equipment. While he would be doing this he would also set up elaborate treasure hunts with buried points and tags that we would then have to find based on starting point containing instructions.

There was monetary value to these competitions but they were created for no commercial purpose. It was a private treasure hunt put on for us just for the fun of it. Brian had the money to fund such adventures on a regular basis. How much money would you need to do this? One can only guess, but let's just say there were periods that funded my lifestyle, usually during the Summer.

The objective of each of these competitions was to gather as many points as possible within a certain amount of time, or sometimes just to find the point(s) first. Usually there was a dollar amount that was awarded per point collected, but sometimes it was winner takes all (which became dangerous at times...I'll explain later). The competitions started out on Vancouver Island (Brian's favourite place) with points that consisted of tags attached to objects or burried canisters with magnets in them, sometimes with notes that lead us to the next point. Brian would hand out a list of coordinates (lat/long or UTMs) with rough descriptions of what we were looking for. We would all take off in cars that could hopefully handle a little off-roading (almost all points lead us into the bush somewhere) and begin collecting the points as fast as we could, reporting in via cell phone.

Brian got tired of the tag and buried point routine so he started making things a little more challenging by giving us difficult equations that would result one coordinate that was a start point (usually a buried canister with a list of points). Then he took it up a notch; we began encountering points that were out in the water, the ocean or a lake - sometimes at the bottom. This required some planning, so I started bringing my wetsuit (which paid off only once).

The Grande finale of all competitions was in Death Valley. A month long adventure that took us all over the national park, included a dangerous 40km hike north of the Saline Valley, put 13000 km on the rental truck and destroyed 5 tires in the process. Quite the sweet little trek. This competition was different, it not only included the usual type of points, it also included elaborately designed hikes through spectacular parts of the Death Valley region. There was some collecting of points, some very localized races between the teams and bonus points. We all were assigned Iridium Satellite phones that we used in case of trouble out there, but also to call in and find out what points were available that day. They were expensive to use and in retrospect, I probably should have used the pay phone 200m away from camp to talk to my girlfriend. The $700 phone bill could've been trimmed a little I figure. Anyway, it was all well worth in in the end.

Here are some clips from various adventures and competitions. More coming later. Enjoy!